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The costs and labour of whistleblowing : bodily vulnerability and post-disclosure survival
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Kenny, Kate and Fotaki, Marianna (2023) The costs and labour of whistleblowing : bodily vulnerability and post-disclosure survival. Journal of Business Ethics, 182 . pp. 341-364. doi:10.1007/s10551-021-05012-x ISSN 0167-4544.
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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-05012-x
Abstract
Whistleblowers are a vital means of protecting society because they provide information about serious wrongdoing. And yet, people who speak up can suffer. Even so, debates on whistleblowing focus on compelling employees to come forward, often overlooking the risk involved. Theoretical understanding of whistleblowers’ post-disclosure experience is weak because tangible and material impacts are poorly understood due partly to a lack of empirical detail on the financial costs of speaking out. To address this, we present findings from a novel empirical study surveying whistleblowers. We demonstrate how whistleblowers who leave their role as a result of speaking out can lose both the financial and temporal resources necessary to redevelop their livelihoods post-disclosure. We also show how associated costs involving significant legal and health expenditure can rise. Based on these insights, our first contribution is to present a new conceptual framing of post-disclosure experiences, drawing on feminist theory, that emphasizes the bodily vulnerability of whistleblowers and their families. Our second contribution repositions whistleblowing as a form of labour defending against precarity, which involves new expenses, takes significant time, and often must be carried out with depleted income. Bringing forth the intersubjective aspect of the whistleblowing experience, our study shows how both the post-disclosure survival of whistleblowers, and their capacity to speak, depend on institutional supports or, in their absence, on personal networks. By reconceptualizing post-disclosure experiences in this way—as material, embodied and intersubjective—practical implications for whistleblower advocacy and policy emerge, alongside contributions to theoretical debates. Reversing typical formulations in business ethics, we turn extant debates on the ethical duty of employees to speak up against wrongdoing on their heads. We argue instead for a responsibility to protect whistleblowers exposed to vulnerability, a duty owed by those upon whose behalf they speak.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HF Commerce |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Whistle blowers , Whistle blowers -- Cost effectiveness , Business ethics | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Business Ethics | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Springer Netherlands | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0167-4544 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | January 2023 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 182 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 341-364 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10551-021-05012-x | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 8 February 2022 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 8 February 2022 | ||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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